


Up on the Rooftop

by Skyler10



Category: Bella and the Boys (2004), Takin' Over the Asylum
Genre: Alcohol, Drunken Kissing, F/M, Holidays, Kissing, Mental Health Issues, Mistletoe, New Year's Eve, Romance, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 22:29:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8818633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyler10/pseuds/Skyler10
Summary: One night while working as a photographer at a corporate Christmas party, Bella meets the energetic and successful Campbell. But the handsome DJ has secrets of his own. Maybe there is someone who gets her after all.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For TPP’s “Lonely hearts on the holidays” and also songfic again because I can’t stop myself, apparently. haha Based on the Carole King and James Taylor song “Up on the Roof” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E22BAyMN04g) but with obvious holiday allusions as well.  
> Also fits winter bingo: escape.

_When this old world starts a getting me down,_

_and people are just too much for me to face._

_I'll climb way up to the top of the stairs and all my cares just drift right into space._

_On the roof, it's peaceful as can be and there the world below don't bother me, no, no._

* * *

 

Bella sighed as another member of the party staff joined her on the freezing rooftop. He didn’t say anything, including calling her back inside, for which she was relieved. He just sat next to her and drank whatever was in the glass bottle he held.  

“’M not supposed to have any, but I do anyway.” The young man winked and downed more of his beverage. There was something irresistibly boyish about him, but also sad, which was probably obvious since they were sitting on a rooftop in the snow instead of reveling in the afterparty inside.

“Why not?” Bella dared to ask, taking another swig of her own drink. The alcohol warmed her from the inside and gave her liquid courage. She bumped his shoulder and swung her legs so the rubber soles of her work shoes bounced against the brick of the building.

“Interferes with my medication.” His rueful smile challenged her to dare ask.

“Are you sick?” She sensed him reading the concern in her eyes. She tried to keep any sign of pity off her face, just pure curiosity and concern for a stranger. A very fit, charming stranger.

He finally barked out a laugh. “Yeah, but they say I’m well enough to go home. Spent some time in hospital, years back.” He sniffed and turned abruptly from watching the snowfall over the city to look at her more directly. “What about you? What’re you doing up here, night like this?”

His gorgeous Scottish accent would be the death of her, she just knew it.

“Oh, just don’t like crowds. And a little blue I suppose. Blue Christmas and all that.”

“ _And I’ll have a blue, blue blue blue Christmas_ ,” he crooned in response. “You like Elvis?”

“Yeah, he’s alright.” His sudden shift in conversation bemused her.

“Alright?! Just alright? Ooooo… wait, what was your name again?”

“Bella,” she laughed. She hadn’t introduced herself since he hadn’t, but now she was at a disadvantage.

“Ooooo, Bella! I will have to show you the light! Elvis is… the king!”

“Big fan then?” She raised her eyebrows, wondering if she had a fanatic on her hands.

“Well, he’s not the Beatles, I’ll give ya that, but his impact on the world of popular music…”

As he rambled, she remembered an important detail in the midst of her admiration of his features.

“Oh! You’re the DJ!” she burst out in the middle of his explanation of the history of rock ‘n’ roll.

“Indeed I am.” He preened. “Campbell Bain, professional DJ. And you’re the event photographer, yeh?”

“That’s right. So, Campbell Bain, how did you get into the music business?”

“By way of radio, lass, the only way there is!” His pride in his profession made a piece of her heart twinge. She longed for that kind of passion and energy. He radiated it. “There was a friend of mine, got me into it.”

“When you were in hospital?” she prodded, hoping to get more of his story.

“As a matter of fact, yes.” He stared at the hustle and bustle below. A city rushing home with their treasures, as the old song went.

“Sorry, if you don’t want to talk about it… I don’t mean to…” Bella backtracked, trying to figure out where that bouncy stranger had drifted off to at the mention of his past.

“Nah, ‘s alright. It just, well, wasn’t your conventional hospital.” He winked and twisted his finger near his temple, and she understood.

“Ah. Sort of wish some of the people I knew who needed help could have gone to a hospital to get well.” She knocked back another gulp of her drink.

“Not everyone got well who was there. And we never fully recover.” He said it like a warning. A hurdle. A test.

“Do any of us?” she asked rhetorically. “World like this. There’s no recovering from it.” The alcohol and the circumstances of the night were making her emotional. She tried to pull herself together, but utterly failed when he placed his mitten-ed hand on hers.

“Bella,” he said after a long pause, “this rooftop is freezing my arse off. Would you like to get chips? With me? Tonight? Right now?”

Her smiled blossomed once more. “Yeah, I would, thanks.”  

* * *

 

Their relationship that December developed in fits and starts. They would work the same event, talk for hours, then not see each other for days. They eventually exchanged phone numbers, but she rarely called. She had a daughter, she told him one night as they raided the remainders of an open bar at an event that had long since cleared out. A daughter in boarding school on a full scholarship.

“It’s not one like what you think though,” she explained so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea. “It’s for, well, the not…”

“Privileged and snooty?” he filled in for her and poured her another drink.

“Yes! That’s it exactly,” she laughed. “It’s for those who are less fortunate in the snootiness department. ‘S a good school though. I’m proud of her. She works hard. Deserves it.” There was a bittersweet, wistful tone in her voice telling him too much. That she wished she would have had the chance herself, perhaps. That things had turned out differently.  

* * *

 

Still, even after learning so much about her life as a single mum, a struggling photographer, a former foster kid and growing up in a group home… it didn’t push him away. Instead of running, in fact, it only seemed to bring them closer. 

“I know it’s not the same,” he offered on another rooftop after a New Year’s Eve gala they were both working. “But St. Jude’s was just another place for misfits too yeh know. And most of us young uns were put there by our parents as well. Or the state.”

“Yeah, ‘cept our drugs weren’t prescribed by doctors, least not to us, anyway,” she teased.

“You’ve got me there, love.”

The drunken joviality of the evening faded into something softer as he realized his mistake.

“Sorry!” he sputtered. “I didn’t mean, at least, not if it’s too soon, of course it’s too soon. What am I saying, it’s completely out of line, in fact, I’ll just…”

“It’s almost midnight,” she interrupted him.

“Yeah?” On the streets below, a countdown began. “’M sorry if I ruined your New Year’s Eve.”

“3… 2…” she counted down with the revelers on the ground.

“Bella, tonight was… and I understand if…”

She shut him up with a kiss.

“Campbell Bain?”

“Mhm?” he squeaked.

“I think I maybe love you too.”

“You’re very drunk,” he observed.

“Well spotted, Mister DJ.” She lifted her glass to him.

“C’mon, then, let’s get you home.”

It wouldn’t be the last time one of them got the other to the safety of home after the ghosts of their pasts led them down the path of too much to drink. But over time, it took less and less alcohol to end up in each other’s flats at the end of the night. All innocent, of course, but eventually, that also became less so.

His friends and co-workers began to comment on the change in her. But it wasn’t until her daughter texted her one day after a visit and asked point-blank: “Mum… have you been seeing someone? You’re different,” that it registered to Bella how attached she had gotten to Campbell.

She brought him to the rooftop of her building when he arrived to pick her up for a date, for the sake of familiarity and old times. It was late autumn by now. Soon it would be winter and snowing and the old ache would be back. Better to let him down easy, she thought. To end things before they took it too far and they both ended up too hurt to recover.

But then.

Then he ranted about remixes and upcoming guest interviews on his show and dealing with celebrity entitlement. He brought out that smile that could power the sun. He put his arm around her shoulder as they took in the fiery leaves at the park just blocks away.

Never one to be shy about sharing his thoughts and emotions, he told her she meant the world to him, and he was so glad to have met her. He told her about the recent appointment with his doctor and how he’d achieved “measureable improvement” this past year. Beyond what anyone expected. He thanked her and adored her and asked why she was crying.

“Because I love you, you loony,” she confessed through her tears. “You really mean it? You want to be with me still, after all you know?”

“Oi, I could say the same to you, yeh know!” He squeezed her shoulder, but then grew serious. “There’s still part of me that will never be as perfect as you deserve, you understand that, though? I might go manic and think I can fly or get so depressed I want to… live in a box. Under a bridge. But, Bella?”

“Yeah?” Hope shone in her eyes. If he was talking like this, he meant it. It wasn’t just some passing ramble of his. Whatever was coming next, she knew it was from his heart.

“Through all of that, I can promise you one thing: I will never stop loving you. Even if I completely lose all of my marbles,” he paused to make a silly face, coaxing her to smile, “there will always be at least one marble left up there. And it belongs to you.”

She shook her head in amusement at his analogy but kissed him deeply and prayed he would never forget it.

* * *

 

Another series of holidays rolled around. The DJ and the photographer could often be found sending each other flirtatious looks and there always ended up being a few songs dedicated to “someone special who knows who she is” each night they worked together. And no one at her studio made any complaints when they found extra shots of the DJ on her memory cards.

Their last event of the year fell on Christmas Eve. One of the interns at Bella’s studio had her camera, so she was free for a last dance of the evening. Campbell set the song to play and, with his usual flash and flare, extended his hand in offering. She gladly took it and swayed with him to the slow, romantic beat. What she didn’t realize, however, was that he had a plan for where to take them: off the dance floor. At least, she didn’t notice until he stopped, far away from the rest of the crowd and quite a way to the side. In front of the door to the rooftop-access staircase. She giggled and bounded up the extra floor from the penthouse ballroom to the unlocked door. He propped it open, but held her in place under the doorway. Flurries were just beginning to fall.  

“Look up,” he hinted when she scrunched up her brow in confusion at why they weren’t following their usual routine of sitting on the edge of the building to watch the city below. She glanced up to where he was pointing.  

A beautiful sprig of mistletoe hung above them.

She wasted no time in pulling him close and snogging the breath from his chatty lips. He might be the one the world called “crazy,” but she was crazy for him, and with all she had lost in her life, she didn’t care who knew it. There would be hard times to come for them, and plenty, but no one understood them like they understood each other, and together they would make it through.

“Merry Christmas, Campbell,” she panted as they back away.

“Merry Christmas, my Bella.”

* * *

 

_So when I come home feeling tired and beat, I'll go up where the air is fresh and sweet._

_I'll get far away from the hustling crowd and all the rat-race noise down in the street._

_On the roof, that's the only place I know, look at the city, baby._

_Where you just have to wish to make it so, let's go up on the roof._

_And at night the stars, they put on a show for free._

_And, darling, you can share it all with me, that's what I said, keep on telling you_

_That right smack dab in the middle of town, I found a paradise that's trouble-proof._

_And if this old world starts a getting you down, there's room enough for two_

_up on the roof, up on the roof, up on the roof._

_Everything is all right, everything is all right._

_You got the stars above and the city lights below, let's go up on the roof._

 


End file.
